IDIBC Chapter 130

Coronation Ceremony (1)

As soon as Ricardo appeared, the Grand Priest was the first to emerge into the great prayer room. Having been confined only to the prayer chamber all this time, his face was deathly pale. Seeing this, Ricardo smiled bitterly.

“Now you finally seem ready to properly carry out the will of God.”

Despite the twisted tone of his heavy sarcasm, the Grand Priest couldn’t offer any response.

“Come this way. This is where you should be, is it not, Grand Priest?”

Ricardo gestured to his side with a tilt of his head, smiling in a seemingly affectionate manner. It was a sweet smile that almost made one forget he had come to the Grand Temple with a blade sharp as ice.

The next person to appear was Stuart. Even seeing what was unfolding before his eyes, he wore an expression of disbelief as he personally pushed his wheelchair toward Ricardo.

“Crown Prince, please come up as well.”

No sooner had Ricardo’s words fallen than the Demahen Knights courteously assisted him.

As Stuart, now atop the platform, sat back in his wheelchair, Ricardo personally approached and pushed it. At this unexpected action, Stuart distinctly furrowed his refined brow.

“Ricardo, what is all this? You’ve always disliked making a commotion.”

At the light jest that didn’t match the atmosphere, Ricardo chuckled softly.

“Since our enemies made such a commotion first, shouldn’t I respond in kind?”

Stuart let out a small laugh. From Ricardo’s attitude, he intuited that he had found the key to the labyrinth. Perhaps even that today’s commotion might become Ricardo’s coronation ceremony.

However, what puzzled him was why Ricardo had specifically restored him to the position of Crown Prince.

Stuart vaguely assumed it was merely intended to prevent Harriot from exercising authority from the Crown Prince’s position.

“So now it’s time for the star of this event, my father, to make his appearance?”

Since Ricardo had stationed the Demahen Knights in the imperial palace, the Emperor had rarely shown himself outside the imperial quarters. Of course, his tyranny had continued in the meantime, but his unpredictable orders were routinely dismissed at Stuart’s discretion.

“He was so afraid of something that he only briefly showed his face at Harriot’s wedding. I was starting to think I might forget my father’s face.”

“……”

“But now that his beloved son has been dragged here like this, surely he’ll appear.”

After learning that his orders were being repeatedly blocked by Stuart, the Emperor had used his confidants to implicate the people of Count Serhen’s household in treason and drag them to the imperial palace.

Stuart had tried to find and protect them, but the Emperor kept their location thoroughly secret. And on the day of Harriot’s wedding, the Duchess of Rochester had been confined in the imperial palace.

This too was a fact known only to the Emperor and his confidants, and though Stuart learned of it later, he could never discover where she had been imprisoned.

The Emperor, who had engaged in such eccentric behavior, had since confined himself to his own palace.

“About the Duchess… I’m terribly sorry.”

“Your Highness the Crown Prince has nothing to be sorry for.”

Ricardo gazed at Stuart with a steady look before pushing his wheelchair to the center of the platform.

In Stuart’s eyes as they briefly met, the emotions reflected were remorse and long-festering anger.

Though he seemed unaware of his own feelings as he faced death, they were perfectly clear to Ricardo.

The fact that he was now uncontrollably furious with his father.

A fleeting moment of pity crossed Ricardo’s eyes as he observed Stuart. Ricardo looked at the protagonist who was throwing Stuart’s emotions into such confusion.

“Here he comes, our Imperial Majesty.”

The Emperor appeared in disheveled attire, having come straight from his bedchamber wearing only nightclothes with a single robe thrown over them.

Ricardo’s face, which had maintained an expressionless mask until now, briefly contorted. It was because of his mother being dragged behind the Emperor, bound with rope.

Ricardo felt the pupils of his eyes turning red uncontrollably and closed them tightly. When he opened them again, his eyes had regained their original light.

“Am I late?”

The Emperor walked through the prayer room with his robes fluttering, striding casually.

As the Emperor approached, Ricardo kept his gaze not on the Emperor but on his mother. In response, Paula showed him a faint smile.

‘I’m alright.’

Though she hadn’t spoken aloud, Ricardo could understand what his mother was saying in her heart.

She hoped that protecting her own life wouldn’t interfere with what Ricardo was trying to do. There wasn’t even the slightest tremor on his mother’s face.

At his mother’s resolute appearance, Ricardo gradually regained his composure. He released his hand from Stuart’s wheelchair and stood facing the Emperor.

“Please come up quickly. Because Your Majesty was late, I committed the disloyalty of ascending the platform first.”

The Emperor laughed as if amused. Stuart, who had been staring at his father with an indecipherable expression, called for the attendant guarding his side. As the attendant approached the bottom step, Stuart, keeping his firm gaze on the Emperor, gave his command.

“Go and bring the imperial crown. It seems there’s about to be a coronation ceremony.”

Seeing the Emperor’s face twist horribly, Stuart laughed aloud, his chest heaving. What an absurd situation this was!

The great prayer room where everyone had gathered was as bright as just before a service would begin. Even the highest lamps, used only when receiving divine oracles, were lit brilliantly.

Stuart looked at the knights standing in formation, fully armed, inside the prayer room. As far as he could remember, armed knights with swords had never once entered the temple.

The appearance of the knights divided on both sides was markedly different. It wouldn’t be strange at all if they suddenly turned on each other and came to blows.

The Imperial Knights held the Duchess hostage, while the Demahen Knights held Harriot.

Stuart looked at his younger sibling, bound and trembling, rolling his eyes in fear.

While Stuart watched the situation unfold, feeling an emotion he couldn’t quite name, Ricardo once again requested the Emperor to ascend the platform.

“Please come up. As you can see, all preparations are complete.”

Watching the Emperor set foot on the platform, Ricardo pulled something from his side. Confirming what it was, Stuart laughed aloud once more.

“The Schneider sword.”

“Correct.”

The Schneider sword that had once been handed over as payment for a lost wager still gleamed with a lustrous light. As Ricardo drew the sword from its sheath, the blade flashed sharply in the light.

“Yes, a coronation ceremony couldn’t be without the Schneider sword.”

After gazing at the sword with narrowed eyes for a moment, the Emperor stepped onto the final platform level and asked Ricardo.

“The key to the labyrinth?”

Even as he asked the question, he gestured with his hand to order the Duchess of Rochester to be dragged to one side. In response, the Demahen Knights also pulled Harriot closer to their side.

“Do you mean this?”

Watching the sharp sword draw close to his mother’s neck, Ricardo pulled the key from inside his chest. The key hanging at the end of a long cord was no different from what the Emperor had seen in the imperial archives in his childhood.

The Emperor followed the key with his eyes as if entranced.

It was an object he had desired every single day from the moment he was born and learned to speak. That key of love and hate that had always made him feel incomplete because it wasn’t in his hands was now before his eyes, and his feet naturally moved toward it.

“You finally found it.”

“Yes, so please come closer this way. Aren’t both of these items I’m holding imperial property? Come and snatch them away, or beg for them, or do something. Just stop threatening my mother.”

The Emperor approached Ricardo without even noticing the ties of his robe coming undone. Under the bright light, his aged body was fully revealed.

Watching this, Ricardo handed the sword he was holding to Stuart, and let the key dangle long toward the floor so the Emperor could see it well. The Emperor’s eyes, filled with greed, fell vertically following the key.

“Do you want it?”

The Emperor didn’t answer, but Ricardo couldn’t fail to recognize the longing in the Emperor’s eyes.

Ricardo finally let out a bitter laugh. He was furious to the point of absurdity at all the things the Emperor had done just to obtain this one worthless object.

Ricardo looked at the Emperor, completely blinded by desire, with eyes full of disillusionment, then shook his head.

He no longer felt like dealing with the Emperor. Ricardo only turned his head to call the Grand Priest standing in a corner of the platform.

“Stand in the center. His Majesty has arrived, so now it’s time to offer prayers.”

As Grand Priest, there was no more reason to delay. Ricardo, who possessed the Schneider sword, had even obtained the key to the labyrinth.

Just as the Grand Priest, his body trembling violently, had nearly reached the center of the platform, the Emperor’s madness-tinged voice echoed through the great prayer room.

“Are you really going to wear the imperial crown right in front of me? So you’re saying we should all die together.”

“……”

“I hear that woman you cherish so dearly is dying? And all while trying to save your father. If you insist on receiving the throne from the Grand Priest today, you will lose your mother as well today.”